The invention consists of a scraper cleaning apparatus for reversible conveyor belts and includes a first scraper means, mounted in the vicinity of a first discharge station of the conveyor belt, and a second scraper means, mounted in the vicinity of a second discharge station, in which system, dependent on the direction of movement of the conveyor belt, one of the two scraper means is continuously active while the other remains inactive. A conventional apparatus of this type is not detached from the belt, which results in the disadvantage that, in combination with the usual adjusting means, and the applied pressure springs of the independent scraper arms, the scraper blades when inactive keep scraping against the belt, causing accumulation of dirt into undesirable locations, because the dirty side of the belt moves into a position where material, which is to be transported, is discharged onto the belt a couple of yards after passing the inactive scraper blades. Furthermore in the dragging position, the blades are sharpened in such a way that, dependent on the frequency of the conveyor belt apparatus, in combination with the experimentally chosen rubber springs for the scraper blades, the surface layer of the conveyor belt may be seriously damaged, which afterwards makes proper cleaning impossible.
A problem of known apparatuses lies in keeping the scraper blades under constant pressure against the surface to be scraped and cleaned, because the pressure force is affected by wear of the blades, by the different thickness both in the transverse and in the parallel direction of the conveyor belt and by the movement of the belt. Due to these factors in combination with the fact that the scraper means becomes dirty and because the location of the scraper mounting is hard to inspect, in practice the adjusting of the scraper means is a difficult and time-consuming matter.
The adjustment problem of the usual scraper apparatus results in selection of such an adjusting position that the average operation between the periodical adjustments is less than optimal.